2015 Meursault Perrières 1er Cru

Jean-Baptiste Bouzereau described his young 2016 whites as “rather classic wines, a pleasant surprise after a very complicated year.” The rain in September—Bouzereau said 40 millimeters fell between September 13 and 19—really saved the harvest and brought better balance in the wines, he added. And quality here was more consistent than in many other cellars “because nothing was really wiped out by frost.” Bouzereau picked from September 21 through 29, with grape sugars ranging from 12.2% to 13%, chaptalizing the lighter wines by a half degree.

The alcoholic fermentations finished by the end of December and the malos in March and April (the wines had been sulfited three or four weeks before my visit). Bouzereau told me that since he moved into his current cellar in 2009, the fermentations have finished “dry and well.” He did more frequent—but light--batonnages for the ‘16s than in recent years, especially for his Meursault Blagny. The more important cuvées will be racked before the 2017 harvest and returned to barrels; Bouzereau will then fine them in tanks for a month before bottling them in January. He predicts that the ‘16s will be accessible in three or four years.

As for the 2015s, Bouzereau believes that the quality of the grapes and their high levels of dry extract will enable them to age well. “Some wines are almost tannic,” he noted, adding that he finds the colors surprisingly bright and pale for such a sunny vintage. These wines have alcohol levels between 13.2% and 13.5% without chaptalization. Bouzereau noted that his wild yeasts work very well and that the finished alcohol levels can actually be 0.3% higher than before the fermentations.

Jean-Baptiste Bouzereau, who took over winemaking here in 2000 after working with his father Michel for ten years, told me that this estate has crushed all its Chardonnay fruit since 1998. He began harvesting in 2015 on August 28 and finished on September 7, bringing in his grapes with potential alcohol between 12.5% and 13.1% and chaptalizing just 0.2 degree. Bouzereau describes the young 2015s as elegant wines, maintaining that the vines never really suffered and that there’s no sign of extreme heat in the wines. Yields, he added, were “normal”—i.e., in the 50 to 55 hectoliters-per-hectare range.

Bouzereau uses 20% new oak for his village Meursault and 25% for the rest of his wines, including some demi-muids for the Meursault Les Grands Charrons. The 2015 malolactic fermentations finished between mid-March and early May of this year and Bouzereau’s normal practice is to bottle the second December and January.

Incidentally, Bouzereau told me that his 2006s are better now than they were several years ago. Similarly, he said, the 2015s from calcaire soil will need some extra time in bottle.